Customer relationship management (CRM) is the strategy a retailer uses to develop an ongoing, individual relationship with a customer to ensure satisfaction and loyalty. But the specifics of CRM can mean different things for different retailers.

At the recent MIT CIO Symposium, Bryan Kirschner, director of the research/strategy organization Apigee Institute, and Jerry Wolfe, CEO and founder of food industry platform services provider Vivanda, participated in a panel discussion on consumer connectivity and engagement. Chain Store Age followed up with the two experts to ask a few more questions about engaging today’s connected customer.

In theory, the launch of a limited-time, 250-piece Lilly Pulitzer designer collection on Sunday, April 19 should have been a major coup for Target. Instead, it was a major disaster in marketing, CRM, and operations. By now, the story of how consumer demand for Lilly Pulitzer overwhelmed Target’s website and stores has been told many times. Let’s look at three lessons retailers (including Target) can learn from this experience.

U.S. companies spend $2 billion on loyalty programs, but the investment isn’t yielding the type of increased engagement which drove implementation of the programs, according to a new report from Capgemini Consulting.

In a move designed to offer its guests a more enhanced, robust and personalized experience both inside and outside of the restaurant, TGI Fridays has selected two new agencies – Made Movement (Made) and Meredith Xcelerated Marketing (MXM) – to manage all future digital marketing, e-mail and technology campaigns.

Technology and the proliferation of communications channels have significantly altered the way brands and retailers approach customer engagement. What was a “nice-to-have” strategy of coordinating messages across shopping channels only three years ago is now a “sink-or-swim” requirement for merchants.

In the early days of e-commerce, internet shopping was supposed to spell the demise of the physical store. Pure play online retailers would sweep all before them, rendering the retail store a historical curiosity.

Showrooming may not be as concerning as many traditional retailers once thought. In fact, retailers who embrace clienteling and other strategies can leverage showrooming as an element of the overall all-channel experience for their customers.

Athletic footwear retailer The Finish Line offers a highly seasonal assortment. When spring products started coming in from the company’s brand partners in January 2014, the chain decided to build upon its ongoing omnichannel strategy to create an experience to help boost spring customer traffic and sales.

Three in four (75%) retailers can or intend to identify customers when they walk in the store, including 3% who already do so and 72% who are planning to do so within five years. According to the new 2014 CRM/Unified Commerce Benchmark Survey of top North American retailers from Boston Retail Partners, 95% of respondents indicated customer experience/ customer engagement is one of their top three current initiatives.

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